Your Right to Know

Arizona officials are threatening legal action to stop the Obama administration from moving
hundreds of immigrants from Texas to their state after a surge of illegal border crossings swamped
immigration officials in the Rio Grande Valley.

The U.S. Border Patrol has acknowledged flying hundreds of migrants from Texas to Tucson and
Phoenix, where many have been dropped off at Greyhound bus stations.

Last week, immigration agencies began sending hundreds of minors apprehended while crossing the
border to a holding facility in Nogales, Ariz.

Arizona officials say they were not notified before the transports began.

In a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, a
Republican, insisted that the department’s border-security units stop the transports.

“These aliens are not being transported for the purposes of detaining them in a federal facility
located in Arizona.

“Rather, DHS is inexplicably moving them some 1,200 miles and simply releasing them here
(outdoors in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees) rather than in Texas,” Horne wrote.

Arizona state law prevents Horne from bringing suit against the federal government directly, but
he could find someone else to sue.

Critics of the facilities where minors are held, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and the
American Civil Liberties Union, have demanded access to assess conditions that they say are
substandard.

On Thursday, McCain called for Customs and Border Protection to allow media access to the
Nogales Processing Center.

“There is only one way of knowing what the treatment is, and that’s for the media to be allowed
access,” McCain said on an Arizona radio show on Thursday.

“We need you and any media outlet that wants to be there to be there. What kind of society are
we in?”

McCain has asked for a Senate committee hearing.

The Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have reported a dramatic spike in the
number of people caught crossing the border illegally.

In January, 28,000 people attempted to cross the border; that number spiked to 60,000 in May,
according to McCain’s office.